Hello everyone! Welcome to the 308th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've just about got crafting working, which was significantly more complicated than we ever expected. Not only do we have to handle individual consoles keeping track of separate recipes and the time that each of those requires, but we also have to handle the player coming back later and picking up the item they chose to craft. We also had a bit of a false start when it came to crafting intermediate ingredients, which we were taking much too literally, when the easiest solution involves just crafting the final item and keeping a running tally of resources used in the meantime. And on top of all of that, we have to handle players leaving the game, and coming back much later, which adds a datastore element to the whole thing. But regardless, we've got the first steps ready to go, and they aren't just the flash UI bits either. Now, the player's inventory system properly tracks whether you have the necessary resources to craft an item, it can calculate how long it'll take to complete that crafting, and it'll wait until you hit the collect button to add the finished product to your inventory. Eagle-eyed viewers will have caught the new info panel, that displays how many of a crafted item you already have, and shows the increase when you collect your finished goods. Last week we showed the two halves of the inventory system, this week we've got them combined into one. The list of inventory items that updates live as you collect resources, and the character inventory where you can equip weapons and tools. Also this week, thanks to a tweet by Elttob_ and ParallelMayhem, we experimented a bit with inverted meshes and backlit shadows. Here's the tweet's image that got us excited - shadows in Roblox are pretty basic, but there are lots of cool hacks and tricks to get them to do cool things when you need to, and this trick is one of them. By turning a specialmesh inside out, shadows that were supposed to be cast on the top, instead render on the bottom. In most cases, this would be weird and useless - however, in space, this is incredibly useful to give depth to planetary rings. The shadows of a moon or asteroids being cast on the top of the ring is alright, but being able to see the shadow from the bottom, like the ring is actually made up of little bits of debris, rocks, and ice, adds an incredible if subtle visual impact to the model. And so, we experimented: The shadows from the bottom of a simple plane are pretty cool. However, this trick also makes the shadow not render on the top of the mesh, so a duplicate that faces the normal way is still required. As an added bonus, the small-scale of our spaceship portions of the game make the limited range of Roblox shadows seem that much larger - rather than looking like shadows end 50 feet away, they look to be 5000. We're looking forward to continue experimenting as we work on solar system generation. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will there be any ecumenopolises? A1: We sure hope so. It'd take quite a long time for a colony city to expand that far, but we do want the potential for a colony to take over an entire planet and bury it in the chaos of a futuristic metropolis. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the 307th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've continued work on the Economy Demo, completing the first steps of an inventory and time-delayed crafting system, as well as adding on a few additional menus to serve these new features. Last week we showed a rudimentary inventory system, that kept track of how much ore you had collected by walking over it. It displayed this info only on the crafting screen for an item that used those resources, as a fraction of the amount required. This week, we've added a dedicated inventory screen, so you can see what items you have on hand outright. Updates are fed from the server, that keeps track of your inventory. If anyone has any suggestions for other information they'd like to see on the inventory page, besides item and quantity, let us know. Right now, there's no maximum limit on the number of items you can hold, as we're still in the midst of discussion over whether it should be a quantity limit, or a volume limit. It seems that only the most realistic games try to go for an accurate scale of items between in-world and in-inventory, but is that the right choice for a game primarily based around mining ores in space, in the future? We also didn't forget to make the total count numbers add up at the top of the menu: With the inventory scroll out of the way, it was time to move on to the second pane on-screen when viewing a personal inventory. The middle of the UI has been reserved for character interactions, equipping tools and armor, selecting special upgrades, and perhaps even upgrading stats. With those plans in mind, we've begun working on that panel: We'll have more info about this panel, and the other inventory menus next week. Next up was a very exciting feature - making the crafting system work. While there remain a few kinks to be worked out, and some further discussions to be had with the community about how crafting things is expected to work, on the visual side things are going quite well. We have connected the crafting button to some code that adds up the time to completion, tracks how long is remaining, and visually displays that info with a highlight. The timer counts down as progress is made, and if you change your mind you can always hit cancel. And if you don't want to hang out in the fabrication interface for however long your crafting is going to take, we've mocked up what a progress indicator on your HUD might look like once you leave. It'll just be up to you to remember what you were crafting, and where you left it. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: What can factions put in their Stations? A1: Since the interiors of Faction Stations are entirely optional, and no gameplay aspects rely directly on there being interiors, what a Faction chooses to include inside is entirely up to them. If you want meeting halls, conference rooms, assembly spaces, it's all entirely up to you. Normal Station actions will still be accessible when in proximity from the outside, but you won't need to include a construction terminal or anything inside. Q2: Can we build custom cockpits for our fighters? A2: We discussed this a long time ago, and the consensus was that scale was not going to work with having tiny ships and even tinier cockpits. However, viewport frames may offer a compromise between the two. We can overlay a view from inside the cockpit on the client's UI, at normal scale, and have most things work - however, there are still some limitations, like dynamic lighting not working and particle effects not rendering. If you build it, we'll do our best. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the 306th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Alert the Dwarves! This week was all about mining, ores, and more crafting, including most of the work required for a crafting system demo that we hope to get out to the community soon. We started off this week with a revision to the UI for the Fabrication terminal. You might remember it getting quite hideous, with lists of resources and textbuttons like it was a game straight out of the 2009 Robloxian past. But no more. We've given our first-pass effort at actually designing the interface now that we've got the basic requirements down: Using strong vertical bars to separate the different areas of things you can do at that console, and making the most of scrolling frames, the first iteration was off to a great start. It had tick marks for the number of crafting ingredients required for each item, items were sorted into categories based on other similar items, and clicking any of them would open the construction menu with that item and its recipe selected. But we didn't stop there - further work was required, including adding a title, so you know what menu system you're interacting with, an exit button, to close the menu, and a background, for better contrast with the world going on behind the menu. We added a temporary console prompt to open the menu, further refined the visuals of the category titles, and made the code nice and modular, so we can open to any specific window on a whim. It was then that we saw the incredible potential just barely out of our reach - creating a simulated system, with ores, mining, and a player inventory, and we could test out these crafting menus to their fullest extent. So we jumped at the chance, digging up save files that haven't been edited since 2017: Turning these proof-of-concept ores into individual clusters that could be spawned wherever we pleased: Adding on the new ores and minerals we've added since we made the originals, and making a generation system that uses a weighted random to place a variety of ores across the baseplate that hosts the crafting terminal. And most importantly, adding a basic "mining" function that allows you to walk over the ores and minerals and have them added to your inventory. And finally, connecting this inventory system with the crafting menu, so that when you select an item to craft, the number of that specific resource you have collected is displayed next to the cost. There are just a few more things we need to add before we open this up to the public, so stick around until next week when we get to show those things off. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will we get rail vehicles, conveyor belts, or teleporters to get us places? A1: Rail travel is a potentially viable feature we could look into developing for planet surfaces, it's just a matter of constructing the rails between places you'd want to go. Conveyor belts are a bit weird as a method of transportation, but I believe they're beyond our scope both for players or for cargo - stick to using vwoop tubes for the time being. Teleportation in the RoVerse Universe is a very limited technology. It exists, that's for sure, but it isn't considered a viable way to travel the stars - perhaps because of some unknown danger. Shortrange teleports in Stations are used every once in a while, and zapping yourself from outside your ship into the cockpit is safe enough, but long-range teleports are only used in the most dire of circumstances, like when rescuing crew members from a destroyed vessel. Q2: Are we expected to make the majority of ship interiors? A2: Not at all. Interiors are always a non-required addition to any construction you and your factions want to do. If you want a place to chill out while your ship is at anchor, we'll hook up a way to teleport inside your ship into an interior server. But totally not mandatory. Q3: Do you have to dock point to point with a station to complete a landing? A3: Not necessarily. We're still trying to figure out the best way to do jetbridges to get from stations to ships of all sizes and shapes, so in the meantime it'll be proximity based, with the assumption that you used a shuttle service craft to make the final hop aboard. Q4: Will docking at every station have a full-scale flying area outside before you land, like Hyperion? A4: No, in that instance, Hyperion is special. Since it serves as the tutorial area for new players and we wanted to keep that seamless, Hyperion is in its own little pocket system that is entirely full-scale. For every other station you land at, you'll be docking immediately from space to interior. Allowing players to fly around outside a station would only lead to replication issues when that station comes under attack, if players are defending from inside the server, while others are attacking from the space side - it'd just get confusing. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us!
If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the 305th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've continued working on the crafting system and added new stuff to flight mechanics in preparation for the future. Last week, we showed you a pretty simple demo of the flight mechanics boiled down and extracted to run on a baseplate without any gamemodes going on. This week, we added on from there lots of exciting things, starting with getting Capitals working correctly. So after remembering to set the folder to the large versions of ships correctly, we got the Bolitho up and flying. There will be a few graphical things to fix, like scaling up engine particles and increasing how solid they look, but we're well on the way to having functioning Capitals working as intended. While there won't be many Capitals besides the Bolitho showing up at Hyperion any time soon, it will serve as our proof of concept and test bed for Capital features moving forward. Speaking of Hyperion, we needed a new function added that correctly locates Capital ships when they spawn, because they just don't fit at all inside the Fighter Hangar Launch Bay. So we added a bit of code and a reference point, and now Capital ships can spawn properly at the berths in the docking arm. It works with both Port and Starboard docks, as long as the ship fits in the area, which at Hyperion is unfortunately very small. Capitals any larger than Bolitho don't quite fit... ...like the Avenger, that sorta has to sneak in at an odd angle to make it fit. Just watch the large step from horizontal gravity to vertical gravity at the jetway. The code is flexible enough that we can pick the specific location to spawn any new ships, based on what class of ship is spawning and whether the bays are already occupied by someone else. Capitals spawn on the Docking Arm, Transport ships spawn at the Docking Ring, and Cargo/Mining ships spawn at the Refinery Sector. Mining ships like the vaunted WTT-017-MI-CARGO, which has been rigged and added to the boilerplate to help us test out mining lasers and drills. Here we have the first mining ship test, which unfortunately used the fighter flight code, and was very nauseating. The Capital mode is much more suited for normal flight and mining operations. Last up is the changes we've made to the crafting system. This week, we've added categories to sort crafting recipes so they're easy to find, and we've refined the menu a bit more, making the scrolling frame scale properly with the recipe contents, improving the visuals of the recipes pane, and tying the number of require materials to the quantity selected in the center pane. We have also done quite a bit of math to figure out the base-cost of the different fighter classes. Creating a fake ship with 0 stat points in every category gives us a base cost of about 14,000 credits, with the points adding up from there - points in the hull and shield category increase the cost much faster than the points spent on speed or agility. However, the goal here is to get the cost as close as possible to the cost of the ship in the Dogfight, if not exactly the same, and I think we were fairly successful on that. Ships are crafted from a reasonable amount of raw materials, and while 5000 credits to make something fly is a pretty low bar to cross, I don't see anyone getting very far with a zero-stat ship. On top of all that, we've added a few more constituent pieces to the crafting table, things that aren't used directly, but are an intermediate step of the crafting process for more complex and expensive final products. In particular, the different advanced machinery used to construct different variations of turrets. Progress in all these areas is moving fast, and we hope to get a working demo out soon. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ No questions this week - hit us up in #dev_questions if there's anything you'd like to know. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us!
If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |